The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In a distinct line of cases beginning in the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court relied on the Tenth Amendment to find that states (and related parties) were immune from certain federal taxes.1 For example, in Collector v. Day, the Court held that an otherwise valid income tax could not, consistent with the Tenth Amendment, be levied upon the official salaries of state officers.2
In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court overturned Collector v Day3 and limited much of this doctrine, although it may retain some vitality as to federal taxes directly imposed on states.4 (The doctrine of intergovernmental tax immunity is explained within the Constitution Annotated's discussion of Congress’s taxing power.5 )
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Footnotes
- 1
- This “intergovernmental tax immunity” doctrine traces its origin to the holding in McCulloch v. Maryland that the Supremacy Clause barred Maryland from taxing the Second Bank of the United States. See 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 436 (1819); see also Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U.S. 444, 454 (1978).
- 2
- 78 U.S. (11 Wall.) 113, 124 (1871), overruled by Graves v. New York ex rel. O’Keefe, 306 U.S. 466, 486 (1939); see also, e.g., Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Tr. Co., 157 U.S. 429 (1895), overruled by South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988); New York v. United States, 326 U.S. 572 (1946).
- 3
- Graves, 306 U.S. at 486.
- 4
- See generally Baker, 485 U.S. at 523–24 (summarizing modern doctrine).
- 5
- See ArtI.S8.C1.1.5 Intergovernmental Tax Immunity Doctrine.